Services led by service users: Reflections from secure CAMHS

In 2021 Ardenleigh Secure CAMHS in Birmingham launched a co-designed therapeutic model, the Encompass Model, and have continuously found ways to enhance service user and carer voices in all areas of service delivery. This article shines a light on two aspects of service design that young people and families wanted to give voice to: a group written and delivered by young people and the experiences of having a child in a secure hospital. At Ardenleigh Secure CAMHS we offer a weekly group for parents/caregivers to learn and connect. In this forum they co-wrote the second part of this article to capture their experiences of having a child sectioned in hospital. It was essential to all that these voices were heard authentically, this article was written collaboratively between service users/families (written in italics) and the psychology team (written in sentence case).